X Talks Tech

ActiveFocus featured by TelerikTV

2008-05-23T16:38:48.071625-07:00

Falafel Software showcased ActiveFocus on Telerik's web site. This is a great illustration of what ActiveFocus can do and it can do a lot! I was the lead developer for the Windows version of ActiveFocus and I have to say, Falafel has really taken this project to levels I never imagined. It is extremely easy to use and richly functional.

You have to see this video - watch the filtering capability on how the graphs interact with the grid - wow!

One thing Lino (the president of Falafel) discussed was how the skins can be customized for different industries. Therefore, the terminology can be customized to a specific industry. I need to add, that for those engaged in Agile development, it would be easy to rename requirements to stories, events to iterations and so forth. AF also maintains important information like estimated and actual costs and efforts - critical for teams trying to achieve repeatable processes and cost analysis.

You'll hear in Lino's video that the team plans for integration into Microsoft's Team Foundation Server - that's smart!

Falafel software will be showing ActiveFocus at TechEd 2008 in Orlando, Florida in June 2008 and at the PMI Global Congress 2008 in Denver, Colorado in October 2008.

If I sound partial to ActiveFocus, I am. Having conceived the idea, developed its first iteration and then seeing it turn into a state of the art web application by a rock solid team has been exciting to say the least. I am looking forward to using it with my clients and I will be showing how to use ActiveFocus in an Agile (Agile/hybrid) development setting. More to come later. For now, CHECK IT OUT!

BlogEngine.net Installation experiences

2008-05-23T11:11:54.52475-07:00

I decided to start experimenting with Blogengine.net, an open-source ASP.NET blogging platform. Installation was brainless. Basically, unzip the zip file which you download from here into a directory. You have the option of downloading just the web site or you may download the entire source. I opted for the web site this time. You'll need to add a virtual directory under IIS. Make sure it is configured for ASP.NET 2.0. The installation instructions are very good. Follow them and you'll be fine. Literally, it took me less then 10 minutes to get this site going.

After installation I could run the site flawlessly - quite impressive. First thing was to change the theme as I wasn't too happy with the default. This was another simple task. Simply login with the username/password, admin/admin. You'll get an extra set of links for maintaining the blog. I took care of two things right off, I changed the theme and added my own account. One of the features of Blogengine.net is the ability to have multiple user accounts.

I logged off and that was it. I had a blog. The next thing I wanted to do was to get it setup with Windows Live Writer (WLW). This part didn't go so flawlessly.

I followed the typically procedure of adding a new Weblog account. I specified that this was another web log service (not one of the defaults in WLW). The next page asks for the blog's URL and username/password, I entered those and pressed next. The next dialog (see figure) surprised me because it asked for a provider type. I was under the impression that WLW would detect all that information. Further research indicates that this is not necessarily so. After several attempts, I could not get WLW to detect my blog. Fortunately, this can be done using the Metawebblog API (one of the items in the drop down). You'll need to enter the path to the api which is in the format:

http://thedomain/metaweblog.axd

so mine was http://camaro/blogengine/metaweblog.axd

After entering that information, WLW detected my blog and from what I can tell, functions properly. I'll continue to experiment with Blogengine.net and will report my findings. I'm going to be looking into adding additional pages (non blog pages) which is a feature I've been wanting in dasBlog but is not there.

Change Default Browser in Visual Studio 2005/2008

2008-05-23T07:37:23.181-07:00

If you're like me, and I am, then you appreciate the ease and debugging capabilities of browsers like Firefox. However Visual Studio continues to use IE even if you've set Firefox as your default browser in your environment. Gladly, this can be changed, here's how.

1. In the Solution Explorer, right-click over the .aspx page such as Default.aspx to bring up the context menu. Select "Browse with..." This will bring up a Browse With dialog (see figure).

2. Likely, Firefox will not be in the list. Simply press the "Add..." button, browse to the program directory (c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox), and select the program (Firefox.exe).

3. Press the "Set as Default" button with your preferred browser selected in the list.

4. Note, you can even set the default size of the browser window.

This it!

Convert PDF to Word

2008-05-14T19:34:53.68275-07:00

Need to convert a PDF file to Word? There are a few free online tools you can use that have paid versions. These are:

www.zamzar.com

www.freepdfconvert.com

Zamzar seems to offer more from its free service. If you have short 2-page documents, freepdfconvert did a pretty good job of converting my files. Know of any others?

Create Live Polls with Google Docs

2008-05-12T21:48:15.714-07:00

This is cool. I just discovered that you can create polls with Google Docs. You basically create a spreadsheet to capture the data you want to examine and provide a link to a live form. You can email this link or put it on a web site as I have done at the bottom of this post. To make it work, you first need a Google Docs account. Then, follow these simple steps.

1. Login to your Google Docs account.

2 Create a new Spreadsheet.

3. Select the Share tab.

4. When asked to give a name to your spreadsheet, give it a meaningful name, specific to your poll like "Favorite Browser".

5. In the Invite People area, there is a new option to "to fill out a form." Select this radio button.

6. Press the "Start editing your form..." button. This will launch a different window into which you specify the title, question, help text, etc. Take special notice of the "Question Type." You have the options of selecting text, paragraph text, multiple choice, checkboxes or choose from a list. The screen will change depending on the option you select.

7. When you are finished, press "Done." If you are satisfied with the preview, press "Save"

8. Press the "Next, choose recipients >>" button.

Here, you can invite people, specify preferences, copy the link to the form, etc.

9. Click on "Go to live form" to start entering data.

10. When you open your spreadsheet, you will see your data.

Take my poll on your Favorite Browser here.

Blog Feed Teasers in Feedburner

2008-05-07T22:22:42.084625-07:00

In my post on Blogging Newsletters/Email said I would like to present "teasers" instead of the entire text of my posts in email/feeds so that readers would be encouraged to visit the site (something important for those monitizing their sites). Feedburner uses a feature called Summary Burner to accomplish this. To use Summary Burner.

1. Login to Feedburner and click on your feed.

2. Select the Optimize tab (see figure).

3. Select the Summary Burner for the View menu (see Figure)

4. Specify a Maximum Length and Teaser text to be included in your emails (see Figure).

5. Save your changes. Now when users receive your feeds, your text will be truncated based on the maximum length specified.

Music for Software Developers

2008-05-06T20:38:52.162-07:00

I've been wondering if there's any pattern to music I listen to while programming. I'm considering if there's any connection between the musical genre and type of programming I'm doing. For instance, sometimes I'm developing something simple but tedious and just want to get it done fast. Other times I'm proofing designs, or implementing complex patterns. Then, there's designing/developing the user-interface which takes a sense of both creativity and structure.

Granted, I understand that musical taste is a major component here. Still, just as there are different types of programming, there are different types of music. By the way, I should probably mention that in my development career, I have met numerous programmers who are also musicians ranging from amateur to professional. Any connection there?

Music I frequently code to:

Classic Rock: Most of it, particularly Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, etc. The key for me here is that I have to be familiar enough with the music so as not to be distracted by the lyrics. It seems I'm listening to classic rock when I'm coding something with which I'm familiar.

Various forms of New age: Enigma is a new age group that mixes in some old world elements like Gregorian chants. This is great for coding and particularly when I'm coding a complex design. Check out the sustained electric guitar in "Hello and Welcome" off the A Posteriori album.

I'll listen to harsh fast paced dark electronica when I'm in the groove, so to speak. For some reason it seems to keep my coding pace up. Similarly, certain forms of dark hard-edged rock (maybe even gothic) like Flyleaf. There are other groups, but if I mention them my friends will tell me I'm going to burn in hell.

I'll often code to classical of course, Mozart's Requiem and Vivaldi's Four Seasons being my favorite.

I'll also listen to hymns and praise music. I particularly enjoy the reworking of hymn melodies by groups like Indelible Grace.

I can code to very specific forms of Jazz like Pat Metheny for instance.

Music I cannot code to (nor listen to for that matter):

I've heard programmers say that they like the upbeat rhythms of of dance electronica. This doesn't seem to work for me - it's too repetitive. I end up with code like

while (true)

do something;

Pop - I can't stand this junk with its overly simplistic melodies and cliche lyrics. If anything, this drives me insane and makes me totally unproductive.

Most Contemporary Christian Music for the same reasons I can't listen to pop.

Rap, too repetitive and since many rap lyrics are angry, I'm thinking it would be a bad combination when I'm having a bad code day...or maybe not.

What music do you listen to when coding?

Blogging Newsletters/Email

2008-04-25T06:59:17.412-07:00

Providing a way to subscribe to a blog via email is important. Many, and perhaps most people don't understand RSS, atom, XML nor would they know how to set up a reader. Heck, I hardly understand this stuff. These folks have no way of knowing about any new posts unless they frequent the blog.

I have been contemplating rolling an email subscription module for dasBlog (and other blogging engines). Then I started investigating further. There are several such services available all of which have their pros/cons. Some are: AWeber, Zookoda and FeedBlitz.

First, I didn't look into AWeber after seeing that the starting price was $19.95/mo. I'm looking for a free option so it wasn't worth my time to dig deeper.

FeedBlitz seems to be the front runner in terms of reliability (see this review). it has a free version that places ads in the resulting emails. The relatively inexpensive paid version will remove the ads and I believe will provide some additional functionality. It seems feature rich, and the account setup was easy. Once setup, you have tons of options for managing newsletters (specifying RSS feeds for bloggers, scheduling distribution, look and feel, etc). I have not looked into monetizing the emails but FeedBlitz appears to support it. There are two ways to incorporate it into your blog. One is to use the supplied Form based html code. The other is a link that will take the user to a FeedBlitz hosted subscription form. Obviously, the form based code will not work with dasBlog :(. Overall, I really like this service.

Zookoda was very user-friendly and has a fairly nice feature set. After setup, it takes a day or so to receive a Sender account with which you can start sending emails. Basically, you setup your mailing lists, emails and broadcasts and specify how they are to be distributed. I particularly like that mailing list management aspect of this service. Also, incorporating it into your blog uses javascript and so you can have the email entry right in your site if you use a blogging engine like dasBlog. There are problems with this service however. Based on the review above, its not very reliable in that many subscribers never receive the broadcasts. Furthermore, the company is owned by PayPerPost. There appears to be some controversy around this company regarding their advertising model. I prefer to stay away from controversy.

Currently, I'm using FeedBurner which also provides an email broadcast service. It is more than sufficient. Like FeedBlitz, it uses a form based script so incorporating the form into a dasBlog site is not doable. However, it also provides a subscription link that will take the user to a different screen. One thing I'm not sure about (I'll have to look into this) is whether FeedBurner will allow you to put a character limit on each post that get sent out in email (both FeedBlitz and Zookoda do). This is important if you are trying to drive traffic to your site if you are monetzing with ads and such.

I may provide FeedBlitz as another option for my site. Comments on other options/suggestions are welcome.

----

UPDATE Apr 28,2008: Looks like FeedBurner does not allow for a character limit on the emails sent. So subscribers will get the full post in thier emails.

Create PDF files from your documents

2008-04-22T05:05:35.851125-07:00

I'm always looking for great tools (particularly free/open source tools). Here's one called PDFCreator that allows you to create PDFs from any document that can print to a Windows printer. Furthermore, it is free because it's an Open Source tool. It's extremely simple to install and use. After running the installation program, PDFCreator shows up a a printer in your list of printers (see figure).

Here are a list of features directly from the PDFCreator website.

Create PDFs from any program that is able to print
Security: Encrypt PDFs and protect them from being opened, printed etc.
Send generated files via eMail
Create more than just PDFs: PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, EPS
AutoSave files to folders and filenames based on Tags like Username, Computername, Date, Time etc.
Merge multiple files into one PDF
Easy Install: Just say what you want and everything is installed
Terminal Server: PDFCreator also runs on Terminal Servers without problems
And the best: PDFCreator is free, even for commercial use! It is Open Source and released under the Terms of the GNU General Public License.

Creating a Headline Animator for your Blog

2008-04-10T08:24:44.043-07:00

I've been asked how I created the headline animator that that I use as my email signature, like the one shown below:

Xavier Pacheco

It simply, really. Its a feature of www.feedburner.com. Once you have an account set up you simply navigate to the Publicize tab for your feed and then configure your animator under the Headline Animator section as shown below:

From there you can configure your animator as you like given the various settings. Have fun!

Technology vs. Developer Gold-Plating

2008-04-08T22:55:08.7108754-07:00

According to Steve McConnell, Gold-plating "comes from developers who want to explore a technically challenging new area..." Jeff Atwood, in his blog, says that "In the purest sense, all refactoring is gold-plating. That is, it consumes extra project time and results in no material benefit for the users. But without periodic and aggressive refactoring, we can't produce sane, maintainable code."

While I agree with Jeff's conclusion, I would not go as far as he does in equating refactoring with gold-plating. Having maintainable code does have a direct benefit to the customer or client (the person paying for the development). Ultimately, it's a cost/benefit matter. When the cost outweighs the benefit, then it's not worth refactoring. Plus, at some point (I hesitate at saying this), the code just works and no further development/refactoring is needed regardless of the code being ugly. Furthermore, when it comes to gold-plating, there is an ill-motive even though it may be subtle.

I should probably note that when I use the term "developer" I may be referring to a development consulting organization, an independent consultant or a developer (at any level) within a development team. In all cases, this is a person who can influence the tools and technologies employed in a development effort.

That said, I find that an extensive amount of gold-plating occurs at a much earlier phase of development (such as the proposal phase) which is why I prefer the term "Technology gold-plating" over "Developer gold-plating". This goes right in line with McConnell's definition.

I divide Technology Gold-Plating into two categories.

New Technologies (Bleeding Edge)
Preferred Technologies

New Technology Gold-plating

New technology gold-plating is exactly what the name implies. The developer wants an opportunity to delve into the latest technology. This is extremely dangerous for the client who may be investing his/her money to the effort. In essence what is going on here is development research and education at the client's expense. It works like this. The vendor comes out with a new bleeding edge technology. The vendor pushes it on its partners (who want to play with it). The partners push it on to their clients. Their clients get blood splattered all over them - not good and frankly, quite messy.

Preferred Technology Gold-plating

Preferred technology gold-plating is the use of technologies with which the developer is most familiar or favors for whatever reason. For instance, a developer may use a pre-designed architectural model from the latest popular book on software architecture. Or he may use some pre-fabricated framework. I am by no means saying these are bad. They are excellent if they actually meet the client's technology and business needs. Yet, it happens too frequently that a company ends up with an over-architected monolith of a system when all they needed was an html page and a few lines of java script.

So, how does one prevent this from happening to their project? Stay tuned, I'll be covering this and more in future posts.

Amazon Widget displays offensive material

2008-03-26T09:20:42.32275-07:00

If you intend to use the Product Cloud widget from the Amazon Associates program - CAUTION! I used it on my page here, then later realized that it included to REALLY offensive material. Please forgive me if you saw that and were offended. I have removed that widget. I'm surprised that Amazon actually allowed for that. Yikes!

Email Blogging

2008-03-25T17:39:23.2915-07:00

This is cool. I posted this blog using email and a handy service namedBlogMailr. It's a free service(provided your blog is not for commercial purposes). Neat!

Email Blogging

2008-03-25T16:21:18.94775-07:00

This is cool. I posted this blog using email and a handy service namedBlogMailr. It's a free service(provided your blog is not for commercial purposes). Neat!

dasBlog Themes - effortless

2008-03-16T18:24:09.945-07:00

I have to say that I am very happy with dasBlog's technology. It has been relatively easy to deploy blogs sites. My only gripe is a combination of the lacking dasBlog themes and my own artistic inability to create my own theme. Then, I discovered that numerous designers make their designs freely available. One is simply required to credit the artist accordingly. It took me only an hour or so to theme my personal site at www.xavierpacheco.com. To find free themes, simply Google "Free CSS Templates".

Have fun!

technorati Profile

2008-03-16T16:47:57.867375-07:00

Technorati Profile

I have a new Weblog

2008-03-14T14:21:58.617375-07:00

I decided I wanted a place to blog about more personal matters and do I made www.xavierpacheco.com my personal blog. I've relocated this tech/professional blog to www.xavierpacheco.com/tech. I do believe I have correctly relocated the feeds through feedburner (you'll know if you get this in email or in your reader if you're a subscriber). Please, would someone let me know that you were notified of this post. Thanks!

Microsoft Optical Mouse 4000 disables Screen Saver in Windows XP

2008-01-30T11:01:00.871378-08:00

So this is weird. I've notice that my screen saver never kicks in. I have a Dell Latitude D830 with Windows XP. My mouse is one of those optical deals (Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 4000). When I unplug the mouse, the screen saver works. Go figure. Anyway, if anybody runs into this, that's the deal.

Wiki - Making Development Collaboration Easier

2007-09-26T09:08:54.89-07:00

I can say unhesitatingly that every project on which I have worked has been a collaborative nightmare. The reason? Because Email has been the primary means of team collaboration.

I am pretty much sold on the Wiki approach to team collaboration. At this point, I have not personally implemented a Wiki, I am currently in the process of reading about the various options available. Needless to say, I am only interested in free / open source options. At the moment, I'm considering ScrewTurn Wiki. I am also anxious to see what Google does with their JotSpot acquisition.

In the meantime, to see why Wiki is good for collaboration, watch this video.

If you have any comments/suggestions on Wiki tools - do tell!

Free .NET 3.0 Tutorials Covering WPF, WWF and WCF

2007-09-14T08:05:52.75-07:00

I found this on the Microsoft Learning site. These are 3 2-hour clinics and according to the site:

This collection of 3 2-hour premium clinics teaches about the new capabilities provided by the .NET Framework 3.0. These clinics are for experienced Developers and Software Architects who are looking to adopt Microsoft's next generation technology within their solutions.
Topics covered within the collection include:

Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Communication Foundation

I'm going to take a look at these and will report how they are when done. Here's the link:

https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=127367

Running Logs on the Web with Google Maps

2007-09-13T18:49:23.546-07:00

I'm not much of a runner, but I do try to run a few times a week. I'll normally run about 2-3 miles at at time.

A friend of mine introduced me to a site (I believe it is written in .NET). Using Google Maps, this site allow runners to keep running logs, elevation profiles, and more. It's very impressive.

Here's my run for today: The Run

Anyway, if you're a runner, you might want to check this out.

Everything Online!

2007-09-11T10:12:52.421-07:00

I marvel at how the Internet has enabled our lives. I can still remember having to wait on hold for what seemed an eternity to make a plane reservation. Now, our phone is even online and we get our voice messages emailed to us.

My family shares several calendars using Google Calendar to help us manage life. We use about eight different calendars (Family, Kids, Work, Personal, etc) all selectively viewable within the same view.

Here's something interesting, rather than going to a traditional seminary I am taking classes from an institution where professors are located all over the U.S. and some living abroad. Classes are streamed and I communicate with them over Skype where we can engage in conference calls with other students. Some of my classes will be with professors in Israel - now that's really amazing.

With all the online tools to enable collaboration (See my last post) we can pull together a team of the best developers without requiring them to relocate. This enables me to work in my home office with some of the best talent in the industry. I can honestly say that with rare exception, I eat breakfast and dinner with my wife and children every day - even if I have to work late.

With all this capability, I still cannot find a descent online course for SharePoint. I would like something I can do at my own pace without having to travel, and without having to spend 3K to sit in a stuffy room for 7 hours at a time. If anybody knows of anything, let me know.

Free and Open Source Tools for Developers

2007-09-04T10:48:06.031-07:00

Every now and then, I find something free ( or open source) that is absolutely valuable to my job. Occasionally, I'll announce them. here are some that I use

Notepad++

"a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment."

7-Zip

An open-source file archiver supporting numerous formats.

-----------------

Here are some others I've used over the years:

PDF 995

Pdf995 comes with a PDF printer driver and PDF creator so that you can create PDF files. It displays a popup add which can be removed when purchased. Otherwise, it's totally free.

Skype - Free telephony. This is essential for communication with people and you can buy an inexpensive account so that you can all regular phone numbers.

Color Detector - this tool has been helpful when I've needed to determine the color of something an artist has created when I work on user interfaces.

Not Free but extremely useful

Camtasia Studio - Screen recorder. I use this to create flash recordings for clients so that I can show them something I've done or something we need to look into.

GotoMeeting. Online meetings with conference calling, Fifty bucks a month - unlimited meetings. This tool is a must!

Beyond Compare - My favorite file comparison tool.

Have fun! Any others I should add?

Small companies lack best practices, but should they? (part 1)

2007-09-03T15:13:41.343-07:00

Recently, a colleague and I were discussing the merits of best practices amongst small teams. The context of this discussion is of a development consulting company; companies that provide development resources from project managers to programmers and testers.

We agreed that "best practices" are often a difficult sell to clients that out source their projects to these consulting companies. The reason is that the there is a notion that best practices are time consuming tasks that offer no tangible benefit, but only perceived benefit. In other words, to the client, adding an extra X hours to a task that takes X hours to develop and deliver seems like unnecessary time and money. However, there is a serious fallacy to this reasoning.

Take, for instance, the best practice of code reviews. The whole purpose behind code reviews is to prevent defects in the software and to allow for their repair early in the project life-cycle. Generally speaking a defect costs much more to repair later in the development cycle. Therefore, it is advantageous to find it and fix it soon. This is made possible through code reviews.

One study involves a 10,000 line project done by two different groups of developers. One group did not perform code-reviews. The other did. The amount of money that would have been saved is substantial as shown in the figures below.

Personally, if I am the the customer hiring a development company, I want to make sure that the company performs code reviews, otherwise, I may be agreeing to pay some serious dough when I didn't have to.

If I'm the development company, and if I'm honest, I want to offer my clients the best service for their money. If I really believe that code reviews work, then I am going to work it into the development agreement. If a potential client resists, then I must show the potential cost in my estimate realizing I may not win the client.

I'll leave the analysis up to the reader. For more on this study, go here: Code Review Study.

Thoughts?

Project Heroics = Bad Management, Poor Leadership

2007-08-23T08:29:23.103-07:00

Heroes are great, they work overtime, they give it their all, tackle every crisis and sign up for every seemingly impossible task (do this 20 hour job in 2 hours). According to one manager, "these are the people that advance in a company."

This might come as a surprise, but in reality, what might seem like a good thing is actually bad for projects, bad for the company and bad for the team (the so called heroes and everybody else).

Heroics harbor bad practices

Every project management book I know of that has anything to say about heroics declares that it is a bad practice, a classic mistake.

Projects frequently run the risk of becoming dependant upon heroics when heroics are the norm. Yet, heroics seem to be the one aspect of a team that leaders and managers revere. When a project fails, blame is often shifted to those that didn't give it their all or the heroes who simply couldn't run faster than a speeding train.

Truth be told, heroics exists because of poor project management or poor leadership.

According to Steve McConnell,

"...emphasizing heroics in any form usually does more harm than good. In the case study, mid-level management placed a higher premium on can-do attitudes than on steady and consistent progress and meaningful progress reporting. The result was a pattern of scheduling brinkmanship in which impending schedule slips weren't detected, acknowledged, or reported"¹

Heroics harbor several bad practices. Here are only a few, I'm sure there are many more:

Heroics to meet deadlines only guarantee future tight deadlines
Heroics burns people out, rendering them ineffective
Heroics leads to inaccurate and unrealistic schedules and estimates
Heroics minimize the efforts of those who actually plan and are realistic about schedules and work effort
Heroics promote the neglect of sustainable and dependable processes

A Culture of Heroics

I have worked for several companies that elevate the "can do attitude" to the extreme. In these environments, people tend to get distinguished for "going the extra mile". A can-do-attitude is often equated with loyalty and commitment. Don't get me wrong, there is some truth to that last statement. I'm all about overtime, dealing with crises head on, giving more when necessary and advantageous. It is when these practices are 1) revered and 2) normative (the way business gets done), I say that the company is dangerously immature and unstable.

The SEI Capability Maturity Model defines the lowest level of maturity for a software company (Level 1) as,

"ad hoc, and the organization usually does not provide a stable environment. Success in these organizations depends on the competence and heroics of the people in the organization, and not on the use of proven processes"²

At CMM Level 3, a company is implementing an "effective project management system". Implied here is that individual heroics are not what makes projects succeed, but rather that the company operates according to a proven set of standard processes. Essentially, the capability of a company is organization itself, not the talents and the superior capabilities of a few people.

The bad side to heroics

In battle, the hero is often the one who risks or even gives his life. They are the ones who run into a foxhole with two grenades to take it out during an ambush. Eventually, the foxhole is taken, the hero may be dead as well as members of his team.

Could the team have avoided the ambush if there was proper training, preparation and planning for the mission? Could the team have benefited by having considered all potential risks - areas that an ambush was likely? Could the battle have been won had leadership laid out a well-planned battle strategy?

It would be worthwhile to consider where your organization stands regarding heroics. I would be interested in other drawbacks to heroics, comments?

¹ http://stevemcconnell.com/rdenum.htm

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model#Level_1_-_Initial

If you think your job is hard.....

2007-08-21T08:02:03.838-07:00

Working as a Developer at Falafel is.... well, I'll just let the video speak for itself.

Hard Work At Falafel

PMP Certification Anyone?

2007-08-19T17:01:22.431-07:00

The Project Management Institute (PMI) is the authority in the area of Project Management (PM) and has created the leading standards on PM including the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). PMBOK is an internationally IEEE recognized standard and it is the standard used in establishing the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

If the above paragraph doesn't make your head spin, just look into the requirements for PMP certification. I've been reading numerous articles and blog posts about whether such certification is necessary and worth the investment. One PMP holder suggests that the cost for certification can reach up to $5000 plus a huge investment in time!

I think of the PM's I have worked with over the years and none (including myself) are PMP certified. Yet, many articles I've read seem to indicate that PMP certification is starting to become very important in the marketplace. I quote one author who says, "The exam tests you on PMI's terminology, processes, and process boundaries. What the PMP does not demonstrate is our competency as project managers or our skills in applying our competencies in real-world situations."¹ This, however, can be said of most certifications I believe.

I've read a few articles that make the case for PMP certification. These mostly have to do with personal, professional advancement. One author presents common excuses, my favorite of which was this, "PMP sounds too much like "p1mp," and I don't condone e$_cort services." (Note: I've purposefully changed the text hoping it will prevent any offensive AdSense ads).

Anyway, what I'm wondering, and intend to research, is this question. How important is having PMP certified staff in software development /consulting organizations that provide the entire development team to its clients?

More later.

Smartly Out-Source Your Software Development Project

2007-08-16T12:54:32.572-07:00

The situation is that you have a medium to large scale project you need developed. You don't have an in-house development team or one that is available. Additionally, creating a new team is not an option. Basically, you need to go outside of your company to get this project done.

Here are five quick tips to help you effectively screen vendors.

1. Consider Multiple Vendors

Unless you have experience with a particular vendor, look at several. This is no different then hiring an employee. Make sure the vendor can understand your business needs and can speak intelligently to both the technology and the business domain. Consider their core competencies, certification and experience. Insist on speaking to past customer references.

2. Technology Considerations

Technology Bias

This depends. If you actually don't know much about technology, platforms and so forth, you will not be able to determine whether a vendor's recommended technology is based on the vendor's preference, or based on your business needs. There are a few things you can do here.

a). Require vendors to justify their technology recommendations in their proposals.

b). Hire an independent resource to help you evaluate vendor recommendations or to perform a technology review based on your needs.

c). Beware of technology bias (unless you are already committed to a specific technology). Many smaller vendors focus on a specific technology like Microsoft or Java, etc. On the the other hand, vendors who focus on a specific technology are often extremely competent in that technology - consider this.

Here are some comments a vendor might say that exposes his/her technology bias:

"We develop in XYZ because we've determined that it is better than anything else on the market."

"Everybody is using this technology."

"This technology is the wave of the future."

Here is an honest statement from a vendor:

"I don't know squat about ABC technology and whether or not it will meet your needs, but I am an expert in XYZ and have determined that it will meet your needs."

Untested Technologies

Developers are developers because they love technology and they especially love the challenge of those on the bleeding edge. RUN AWAY FAST from any vendor who recommends using the latest technology, methodology, development platform, etc. The last thing you need is to have your project become the test bed for some new, unproven technology. Remember, new technologies demo impressively, don't be lulled into early adopting.

3. 100% Developer Commitment

If you are providing full-time work, make sure the vendor agrees to a named developer or more to work exclusively on your project for its duration. It is not unreasonable for the vendor to require that you agree to a minimum number of hours per week per developer.

CAUTION: It is not uncommon for smaller vendors to take on Out-Tasking projects (small low-effort projects and development tasks). If you are providing full-time work, it is fair that the vendor grant you exclusive use of his/her development resource. Furthermore, a vendor who needlessly overworks their staff (excessive hours beyond full time) is a slave-driver and doesn't deserve your business.

4. Phased Approach and Status Reports

Make sure the vendor agrees to a phased approach and weekly status reports. Run away from any proposal that doesn't give you visibility into the project (the blackbox approach). You want to make sure that that you have check points throughout the development lifecycle. This is a good point to bring up in an independent review (see below).

HINT: An experienced vendor will assume this. Ask about the development approach they use. If they don't offer this, you'll need to ask. While this is not a disqualifier, it is a red flag.

5. Independent Review

Have the vendor agree to an independent review of their work at points during the development process.

An honest vendor will not only agree to this, but will consider it good for the overall project. I have been on both sides here and in every case, it resulted in further insight that only improved the overall project.

The process you use to select a development team is as important as the development process itself. It can be the factor that makes or breaks your project's success.

First Post to DasBlog

2007-08-12T16:13:10.859-07:00

Well, I'm finally blogging again. I've managed to get DasBlog up and running. It is amazingly simple. It's really just a matter of getting the site copied properly over to your hosting service (if you are hosting on a service) and setting the permissions correctly. For a service, I am using WebHost4Life which has excellent support I must say.

TIP: It is critical that you set the right permissions on the three subdirectories and don't forget to include DELETE permissions or you won't be able to delete blog entries. I know from experience!

\content
\siteconfig
\logs

All is explained thoroughly in the Setup instructions.

At the moment, as you can see, I'm using one of the supplied themes while I work on my own. This is another aspect of DasBlog that is very simple and I'll post more as as I delve into this.

Thanks Steve for turning me on to DasBlog and for tips in getting it running!

So what am I going to blog about? Numerous topics: Development, Project Management, The People Factor, Work Ethics, Technologies, and more.

Stay tuned.

P.S. This blog was written with Windows Live Writer - a great initial experience.